But we forget, Government was also created to act and make decisions.

“Dr Frank Fukuyama (Stanford professor and author of The End of History and the Last Man) has been working on a two-volume opus called The Origins of Political Order, and I could detect from his writings that his research was leading him to ask a very radical question about the United States’ political order today, namely: Has America gone from a democracy to a ‘vetocracy‘ – from a system designed to prevent anyone in government from amassing too much power to a system in which no one can aggregate enough power to make important decisions at all?

‘There is a crisis of authority, and we’re not prepared to think about it in these terms,’ he said. ‘When Americans think about the problem of government, it is always about constraining the government and limiting its scope.’

That dates back to our founding political culture. The rule of law, regular democratic rotations in power and human rights protections were put in place to create obstacles to overbearing, overly centralised government.

‘But we forget,’ Dr Fukuyama added, ‘that government was also created to act and make decisions.’ ” Thomas Friedman, NYT